I was hired by BPlanning on 8/27 thru an on-line “Freelance” site, GURU Project # 858013. I was assigned a writing assignment on 8/28 to do a full Business Plan for one of BPlanning’s clients in Australia. After significant upbeat and cordial coordination with their Client, I delivered the 1st Draft of the Plan on 9/23 to BPlanning Owner, Leonard Woods (, for his review prior to Customer delivery. After a few review cycles with him, I completed the Draft to his satisfaction and he then sent my Draft to the Customer on the afternoon of 9/23. This “Draft” was, based on the cycle of reviews with BPlanning, I judge it to be at least a 90% draft at this point. Our payment agreement stipulated that I receive half of my agreed upon $400 when the Draft was delivered to the Client, which was on Sunday 9/23. The delivered document was highly praised by the Client and my relationship with her has been very close and cordial … I’m sure that she will attest to this as well.in an online “referral comment” she stated … “Mike delivered an excellent plan, great communication and ideas, highly professional, A, Thank you” (ELANCE member “liz70”, posted 9/28)
On Monday, 9/24 I asked BPlanning / Len Woods about when to expect my interim payment. I got this response … “Payments are based upon your Monday report. You’ll receive an email notice from bookkeeping during the week. Payments are made directly from a trust bank owned by BofA.” This was not keeping with the GURU Freelance site payment process but seemed OK to me as long as I got paid. Then, despite already committing to pay this interim payment, I got this message on 9/27 that indicated I would NOT be paid anything until the plan was completed because I was going to be terminated for not agreeing to write enough plans for them and for “insubordination” because I asked about why he was avoiding the GURU SAFEPAY system! I was NOW only going to be paid when I now completed the plan per any Customer comments. “Due to your inability to take on new projects, we are providing notice of your contract termination. Since you only have one project outstanding, you can complete it to the client’s satisfaction at which time you will be paid in full. Contracts under termination are paid at completion pursuant to the terms of your agreement.”
Their action not only violates the Contract Agreement we had in place but all of the verbal commitments they made up to that point. There is no Contract clause in our agreement that says that “contracts under termination are paid at completion”, he made that up! It is clear he wanted to avoid ANY payment once I finished the work. I wrote back a specific email indicating that they were violating their verbal and contract agreements for payment and demanded my interim payment immediately or I would report their violations to GURU and pursue payment via Arbitration per our Contract. BPlanning’s response was as follows … “Based upon your past remarks, failure to comply and insubordination, your contract has been terminated effective immediately. You are deemed to be in breach of your contract terms and guidelines. You are instructed to delete and destroy all proprietary information provided to you by BPlanning and our clients. You are instructed to cease contact with our clients. Failure to do so will cause additional damages. You no longer have access to your email, phone or Skype accounts. Please send all future correspondence by US mail only directed to our legal dept. Future emails will not be responded to.” BPlanning now clearly indicates that they have NO intention of paying me anything despite my accepted deliveries!
His refusal to pay based on “made-up” nonsensical reasons, despite HIGH PRAISE from their Client, is HIGHLY unethical and unprofessional and he will continue to abuse on-line Contractors who have no alternative but to go thru the time intensive, risky and costly California Arbitration process … something he clearly expects us NOT to do over $400! Please help!
BPlanning.com, CEO-Leonard Woods-888-304-7224 x81
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